800 Degrees review

For the first time ever, Jonathan Gold positively reviews a resto in Westwood. The focus is just as much on the food-delivery system as on the pizza itself…Perhaps there are echoes of Schlosser’s pioneering style in the entrepreneur focus and chemical breakdown of the pizza.

800 Degrees is the newest project of Adam Fleischman, the entrepreneur who guided Umami Burger from a gastrogeek obsession into a growing national chain. Nobody could have predicted that customers would line up for the chance to eat a CVap-cooked hamburger garnished with grilled shiitake caps, roasted tomatoes, crunchy Parmesan cheese and seaweed catsup, but they do. When it comes to burgers, nothing beats the carboxylate anion of glutamic acid.

…When 800 Degrees is a staple of every food court in America and the Pininfarina Coke machines have hit all the 7-Elevens, we will have forgotten this moment of wonderment, as we have those months when the first local Starbucks outlet really did serve the best espresso in town, but we really should enjoy this in the remaining few seconds before we all become jaded. This is a place with real Neapolitan pizza for six bucks; drinkable wine; cheap and delicious burrata salads; and an outer-space soda machine. It is vegan-friendly. It is open until 2 a.m. in Westwood Village, a famously difficult dining neighborhood.